Health News: July 25, 2023
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Food Safety
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported a new case of hepatitis A linked to frozen organic strawberries. As of July 18, 2023, frozen organic strawberries have been linked to 10 outbreak-associated cases of hepatitis A reported from 4 states (California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington). Meijer, Wawona Frozen Foods, Willamette Valley Fruit Co, California Splendor and Scenic Fruit Company have recalled strawberry products under the brand names of Great Value, Kirkland Signature, Simply Nature, Trader Joes, and others. Check this CDC page for a list of affected products. https://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/outbreaks/2023/hav-contaminated-food/index.htm
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Cooperstown Cheese Company is recalling 1,400 pounds of cheese because of positive tests for listeria during a routine Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspection. The company has ceased production as they and FDA continue to investigate the problem. Jersey Girl, Toma Celena and Abbie are some of the affected brand names. No illnesses have been reported in conjunction with the recall.The recalled cheese was sold or distributed in New York State and reached customers through farmers markets, restaurants and retail stores from June 21, 2023, to July 10, 2023. Affected products are pictured below. Check here for product list. https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety-alerts/cooperstown-cheese-company-recalls-products-because-possible-health-risk
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The FDA approved Emergent Biosolution's Cyfendus, a 2-dose vaccine to be taken as a post-exposure prophylaxis following suspected or confirmed exposure to Bacillus anthracis (anthrax) in adults age 18 through 65. The vaccine is to be taken along with recommended antibacterial drugs. Emergent has been delivering Cyfendus to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services since 2019, under pre-emergency use authorization status. The efficacy of the Cyfendus vaccine for post-exposure prophylaxis is based solely on studies in animal models. https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/vaccines/cyfendus
Emergent Biosolutions is the same Maryland-based vaccine maker that was forced to discard or destroy up to 400 million doses' worth of the key component of both Johnson & Johnson's and AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine due to quality-control issues back in 2020-2021. https://abcnews.go.com/US/emergent-biosolutions-discarded-ingredients-400-million-covid-19/story?id=84604285
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Dementia Research & News
A study led by the National Institute on Aging has identified 32 proteins that, if dysregulated in people aged 45 to 60, were strongly associated with an elevated chance of developing dementia in later life.The proteome (collection of all the proteins expressed throughout the body) was studied for more than 10,000 participants over the course of 25 years, beginning in 1987. Participants returned for examination six times over three decades, and during this time, around 1 in 5 of them developed dementia.
It is unclear how exactly these proteins might be involved in the disease, but the link is “highly unlikely to be due to just chance alone”, said lead author Keenan Walker. Interestingly, most of the proteins are unrelated to the brain.The findings could contribute to the development of new diagnostic tests, or even treatments, for dementia-causing diseases. The findings were published in Science Translational Medicine. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02374-2
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Neurologists at a memory clinic in China diagnosed a 19-year-old with what they believe to be Alzheimer's disease, making him the youngest person to be diagnosed with the condition. The male teenager began experiencing memory decline around age 17. Imaging of the patient's brain showed shrinkage in the hippocampus, which is involved in memory, and his cerebrospinal fluid hinted at common markers of this most common form of dementia. Early-onset cases, which include patients under the age of 65, account for up to 10 percent of all diagnoses. The younger a person is when they receive a diagnosis, the more likely it is the result of a faulty gene they've inherited. However in this case, Capital Medical University in Beijing couldn't find any of the usual mutations responsible for the early onset of memory loss. https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-diagnose-the-youngest-case-of-alzheimers-ever-reported
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Medical Ethics
Mind-reading machines are coming, but how can we keep them in check? Neuroscientists, ethicists and government ministers discussed the issue at a July 13 meeting organized by UNESCO, the United Nations scientific and cultural agency. Advances in neurotechnology, like implanted brain–computer interfaces (BCIs), which allow people who are paralyzed to control various external devices using only their thoughts, are in trials.
Rafael Yuste, a neuroscientist at Columbia University, told the meeting that an unpublished analysis by the Neurorights Foundation, which he co-founded, found that 18 companies offering consumer neurotechnologies have terms and conditions that require users to give the company ownership of their brain data. All but one of those firms reserve the right to share that data with third parties. “I would describe this as predatory,” Yuste says. “It reflects the lack of regulation.” There is a risk that these technologies will be used to monitor, manipulate, or even modify, our most private thoughts. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02405-y
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How many clinical-trial studies in medical journals are fake or fatally flawed? Anaesthesia journal editor and anesthetist John Carlisle conducted his own study to find out, and determined that about 44% of the studies submitted to his journal over a three-year period had at least some flawed data (such as impossible statistics, incorrect calculations or duplicated numbers or figures) and that one-quarter were "fatally flawed." He called these fatally flawed studies "zombies" because they merely resembled reliable studies but failed to meet the standards of true clinical research.
Carlisle, who also works for England’s National Health Service, scrutinized more than 500 manuscripts that reported a randomized controlled trial (RCT) — the gold standard of medical research. Also alarming, when manuscripts were reviewed without the benefit of access to the anonymized study data, just 1% were "zombie"-like and only 2% contained flawed data. Most journal editors do not ask to review study data. The notorious and growing paper-mill problem is exacerbating the problem.
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Cell Atlases Released
A consortium of scientists published an atlas of images of three human organs that show how cell types are arranged and interact. Detailed maps of the cells show how the placenta commandeers the maternal blood supply, how kidney cells transition from healthy to diseased states and how cells in the intestine organize themselves into distinct neighbourhoods. Each of these atlases comprises hundreds of thousands of data points about gene activity and protein production in individual cells, which are then mapped to their specific location in the organ. The atlases are part of the Human Biomolecular Atlas Program (HuBMAP), which is funded by the US National Institutes of Health. HubMAP aims to create a complete atlas of all the cells in a healthy human body. A recent perspective on the project was published in Nature.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41556-023-01194-w
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Above: an image of intestines from Hubmap website. Courtesy of John Hickey at Stanford University
A Stanford research team also studied the interface between two organs: the placenta and the uterus. The team used data from 500,000 cells and 588 uterine arteries to learn about how cells from the fetus invade and remodel blood vessels in the lining of the uterus so that they become larger and better able to deliver nutrients in the later stages of pregnancy. “They invade the arteries and replace the maternal cells, which is wild,” says Michael Angelo, a pathologist at Stanford University and an author of the study. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2023/07/hubmap-healthy-human-tissue.html
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The Human Breast Cell Atlas (HBCA) project, led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer, University of California, Irvine and Baylor College of Medicine has created the world’s largest and most comprehensive map of normal breast tissue. The breast atlas profiles more than 714,000 cells from 126 women highlights 12 major cell types and 58 biological cell states. It also identifies differences based on ethnicity, age and the menopause status of healthy women. The study was published in Nature.
https://www.technologynetworks.com/cell-science/news/worlds-largest-map-of-normal-breast-tissue-created-375478
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Consumers & Companies Have a Long Way to Go to Reduce Waste
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In an effort to study waste behavior, sustainability, engineering design and decision making, University of Virginia researchers conducted two nationwide surveys in the U.S. in 2019 and 2022. They found that consumers overlook waste reduction and reuse in favor of recycling, and they are not very good recyclers.
The authors argue that a decades-long effort to educate the U.S. public about recycling has succeeded in some ways but failed in others. Corporations are contributing to the waste-related pollution problem worldwide by not reducing the amount of disposable products they create. "Recycling is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for overproducing and consuming goods." https://theconversation.com/decades-of-public-messages-about-recycling-in-the-us-have-crowded-out-more-sustainable-ways-to-manage-waste-208924
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Ask a Patient® Health Newsletter: July 25, 2023 Copyright, 2023
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